


oh, you're in my veins

by longneckmfer



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Soulmate AU, Soulmate AU-Dreamscape, TW: Zombies, cainwest - Freeform, danbert - Freeform, im actually really proud of this ngl, just covering all my bases, tw: mentions of blood and gore, tw: vague science experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-01-28 23:50:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21400693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longneckmfer/pseuds/longneckmfer
Summary: and i cannot get you out.or: a danbert soulmate dream au, where they discover that they were literally made for each other.'a hellish man and an angel on earth...'
Relationships: Daniel Cain/Herbert West
Comments: 17
Kudos: 68





	1. Daniel Cain and the Hellish Man

**Author's Note:**

> _(trigger warning: descriptions of blood, dead bodies, murders, zombies, doctors, surgeries. y’know, everything in a re animator fic! hope you enjoy!)_

Daniel Cain was 100% the type to believe in the concept of soulmates.

Truth be told, he practically daydreamed about it when he was a kid. He couldn’t help it, though; he was always a bit idealistic, and a hopeless romantic to boot. The idea of someone out there being made just for him, to love and hold, to cherish, well…

Sue him, he was in love with the idea of love like that!

He fell in love with the stories of parents that found each other in high school, of the teachers who were childhood friends and just knew as soon as they met, of even his own parents that loved to talk about how in love they were.

_(Though unbeknownst to Daniel, his parents weren’t actually soulmates; his mom’s had died young and his dad was just born without one. However, they loved each other with the intensity and passion as regular soulmates.)_

Daniel was in awe of love, of the concept of soulmates, and couldn’t wait to find his own someday!

...And then he turned 14, and the dreams came.

_That night, his first soulmate dream was of latex gloved hands diving into the open chest of a dead body, of those same hands tearing out a heart with a swift, almost graceful movement._

_He dreamed of blood coloring a pristine white dress shirt, and of a manly grunt of annoyance as said man drove a shovel into some poor bastard’s head and cut it clean off._

_He dreamed of a dusty crypt under what must be Daniel's own house, but in the dream, he seemed desensitized to it, content with it, even._

_He dreamed of the same man squeezing a bottle of neon green ooze into a syringe, his blurry face seeming to focus all attention onto it. In this dream, Daniel feels scared, but awestruck. Like this man is _ impressive.

_He dreamed of rotting corpses rising from the dead, neon green ooze dripping from their mouths and vacant eye sockets. They smell of rotting flesh, and foam at the mouth, and those same rotting, peeling hands reached out to Daniel, ready to tear his throat out before he woke up screaming._

After that, he was afraid to ever sleep again, too scared of what horrors he might be forced to see. 

He would lay awake at night, knees tucked to his chest and cocooned in blankets as he shivered and tried his hardest to stay awake, if only to keep his soulmate’s twisted nature away from him.

After those dreams, after seeing the horrors his soulmate could (and probably already had) inflict on the world, the idea of being their soulmate began to sicken Dan to his very core.

He _hated_ it, _hated_ being bound to someone so evil.

_Why did the other kids get to have someone nice, someone normal, someone not _ insane, _while he got some unseen freako scientist? _

The doctors called him ‘unlucky’ and ‘burdened’, as he was perhaps one of the only kids to get stuck with a young serial killer as his soulmate (usually, according to the doctor, a child wouldn’t get awful dreams of their soulmate unless said soulmate was about to die an awful, inescapable death, or if said soulmate was a truly depraved individual). 

The poor child was given sleeping drugs, drugs that would knock him out and repel dreams to be taken exactly 30 minutes before he was going to go to bed with water. 

The drugs were awful, and worked like tranquilizers- it felt more like being knocked out cold with a hammer than actually falling asleep, but he’d take it over the alternative any day.

Daniel didn’t care why he’d gotten these awful dreams, or what he had to do to get rid of them. He just wanted them _gone_.

However, one night, his mother had forgotten to give him his pills for the night.

She had gone to bed earlier than usual, seemingly forgetting about the dreams Daniel was desperately trying to avoid.

Daniel had tried to stay awake, he really had, but the days of exhaustion and unwell rest, of drugs and medically-induced comas, of being barely-there and kinda-dead, finally got to him. He was out cold and asleep within a few minutes.

_This night, the dreams were different...less horrifying._

_The same neon green ooze and syringes were all laid out on a metal table, but this time the small man was just...staring at them, as if they were some puzzle he was trying to put back together with no knowledge of what it used to look like. _

_His back was to Dan, but it looked like there was a human head in a metal tray that the man was poking with a pencil._

_Speaking of pencils, something in Dan’s dreams happened to be the man sitting on a stool, with a jubilee of wooden #2 pencils in the chest pocket of his lab coat. _

_Their instructor was talking about something involving brain death, but Dan guessed that the man in his dreams wasn’t the instructor’s biggest fan, because every time he spoke, the man broke a pencil perfectly in half. The sound of wood snapping cleanly and swiftly bounced around the walls and in Dan’s head like a haunting echo._

_Daniel also dreamed of blood-free, latex gloved hands covering his gently, of a small voice going _go home, Daniel. You’re clearly not in good shape_, of a pinched but gleeful smile gracing unusually plump lips and a pasty and pale, but very cute face._

That night, he woke up confused with the image of shining, crazed hazel eyes in his mind.

They haunt him, tantalize him, stay with him like a virus that infects every thought in his brain.

_Hazel eyes…_

At some point, Dan meets Meg.

He thinks he likes her, maybe even loves her.

She’s all sweet smiles and reprimanding sarcasm, wrapped up in pink windbreakers and smelling like chiffon perfume. She kisses like a kitten, with a bob of smooth blonde hair and shining white teeth.

She moves in with him, slowly takes up space in his life that he’s all too happy to give her, even if a part of him feels wrong about it. He likes holding her hand, likes falling asleep hugging her, likes lifting her off the ground in a bear hug as she giggles and holds on for dear life.

He likes her. He really does.

He even learns to ignore the dreams, learns to lie about waking up in a cold sweat with a name on his tongue that he soon forgets, learns to live with the fact that though her brown eyes are pretty, they’re not quite the color he yearns for _(hazel…)_.

He puts a ring on her finger, and she cries and kisses his face over and over sobbing out _you’re my soulmate, Dan!_ as he smiles and accepts her affection. Connects their lips and silences her giggles of mirth, and perhaps naivety.

_Dan has fallen back in love with the idea of soulmates with every dream, and he knows that, though he really does like Meg and girls in general, she’s not the one he really wants._

_If Dan’s being honest, it_ scares _him how much he wants this man, wants the blood and horror that his small man will bring him._

_He wants the nights of grave robbing in his dreams, wants the thrill that regrettably fills his body and floods his senses when he has to grab _ H*****t’s _ hands and run off, smiling wide as the smaller man lets out a pinched laugh._

_He longs for the blood and chunks in his hair from exploding bodies and failed experiments, for his soulmate brushing them out of his thick locks and off of his work scrubs. He longs for that same pinched smile becoming softer as they gaze at each other, before that same smile is pressed against Dan’s lips and he feels smaller, boney arms slip around his neck. _

_He longs for the rush of euphoria that slowly comes with reanimating a dead body, of looking towards his soulmate who, for once, has an awed and floored expression on his face because _ Daniel, it worked! By the Gods, it worked! 

Daniel might yearn for someone that wasn’t the girl he was going to marry, someone he hadn’t even met yet, but that was alright. He could live with that.

After all, he’d gone this long, hadn’t he?

It was a Thursday at Miskatonic Medical School when Daniel Cain was metaphorically knocked on his ass.

That Thursday started off as any normal one- Dan checked into his classes, washed his hands in globs of shiny, glittery hand sanitizer that smelled of disinfectant and lemon, and put on his scrubs to get ready to help people for the day. He’d just said goodbye to Meg for the day with a closed-mouthed, sweet kiss _(or at least, he tried to make it sweet; she’d noticed that his heart wasn’t in it today, but hadn’t wanted to press the issue in case it was something sensitive)_, had greeted her dad, who always give him smiles and little warm handshakes, and greeted his friends with his usual smile and polite ‘hello’s, but all day something was _different_.

His muscles felt tense, and there was something hammering against his chest and fluttering in his stomach.

He felt like he was _waiting_ for something, but nothing ever came. Nothing unusual, anyway.

As it got closer to 3:30 PM, right around the time his shift ended and he was free to go for the night, he felt his whole body tingle, and there was a sort of knocking sensation against his head, like his whole body was trying to tell him of something.

_or warn him of something, more like…_

And then _he_ walked in.

Dr. Herbert West, a pale-skinned, childish man with a scowl seemingly etched permanently into his smooth-looking face. 

Dr. Herbert West, who was wearing a pocket protector under his black overcoat _(how did he even_ know _ about that?)_ and had seemingly ironed out all of the wrinkles from his black business slacks and white dress shirt.

_Dr. Herbert West, the star of his every waking nightmare...the psychopath who killed people in the name of scientific discovery and practically bathed in the blood of innocence, who revelled in scientific horrors and would do anything for his experiments…_

_Dr. Herbert West, the man of his dreams, his soulmate who liked licking the flavour off of the PopTarts and chewed on his pens with a scowl, who smiled only for him and who fit perfectly into the crook of Dan’s neck as they read together on their couch..._

Dan felt his heart hammering in his chest with anxiety. His palms felt clammy, and he felt himself straightening up so as to appear taller and more attractive.

(Not that he really had to try; Dr. West honestly looked 16 and seemed to clock in at about 4'11".)

Dan didn't think he could be more anxious, more filled with frayed nerves and shaking emotions...

And then he and his soulmate locked eyes.

Dr. West's eyes widened behind his reflective glasses, and he pursed his plump, chapped lips into the scowl that Dan had grown to recognize and crave to see. He saw the faintest dusting of pink on the smaller man's cheeks.

Even though Dan knew he should, he couldn't tear his eyes away.

_He was his_ soulmate.

Dean Halsey frowned behind them, just as nervous as Dan but for obviously different reasons. His gaze snapped between his prized student and his new charge for a brief few seconds before he nervously interjected himself between them.

"Do you two um...have you two met before?"

"...No!"

"A-Absolutely not!" They denied it together, finally forcing themselves to look away from each other. Dan felt his heart clench at their easy denial of their connection, but then again this wasn't the sort of thing you just blurted out to your Dean at inopportune times.

As Dr. West pointedly ignored his gaze this time around, Dan's mind was metaphorically sounding the alarm.

_There was absolutely _ no way _he could still be with Meg. Not after this, after finally meeting his soulmate._

Dr. Herbert West was already proving to be more of a problem than Dan was really willing to deal with...

_And he found that..._ irresistable.


	2. Herbert West and His Pyre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _\- you’re all i taste,_  
at night inside of my mouth -
> 
> _summary: herbert west doesn’t believe in soulmates, and is solely focused on his endeavors as a scientist in his quest to discover the key to reanimating dead people. he needs no soulmate, no companionship, no love…_
> 
> _...now, that would be so much easier to convince himself of if the man in his dreams could stop being so tender with him…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hnnngh forgive me for being so late with this, i can explaiiinnnn-!!
> 
> this was always kind of meant to be a two chapter thing, since i never intended to rewrite the whole ass movie (though i could be convinced to 👀👀👀👀👀), so if you were expecting that, i'm sorry. however, i hope you enjoy this last installment!
> 
> ily!! happy reading!

Ever since he was a child, Herbert West absolutely _refused_ to believe in soulmates (or be excited about them).

Sure, the notions of one were nice enough, and the implications useful, but the actual thing? Being tethered to another being all of your life, a being that instinctively knows you like the back of their hand?

No. Not for him.

He was a secretive boy by nature, one of solitude and science (his scientific endeavors made a great distraction from the fact that, like any other kid, he longed for companionship, for someone to understand him or for someone to genuinely _want_ to understand him), and magical fairy tale nonsense like _soulmates_ and _love_ were only useless distractions.

Besides, it’s not like soulmates are a guarantee, anyway; he should know, since his own parents were soulmates, but couldn’t make it work with each other and separated when he was only 4 years old (his father had loved someone else before he discovered his soulmate, and had resented Herbert’s mother- and their soul bond- ever since. His mother hadn’t been much better off, becoming jaded and hopeless because _if my soulmate didn’t want me, then who else could?_)

Some people were just meant to be alone, he supposes- and not even divine intervention could help those poor, lonely bastards (maybe he was destined to be one of them, as depressing as one might think that to be).

...And then he fell asleep on the eve of his 14th birthday, alone and slumped over his homework after trying to finish it months before its deadline.

_There was a man, a tanned specimen with a kind smile and warm brown eyes like melted chocolate. His hair was sandy blond and styled into waves, and his slight muscles peeked out under the drab scrubs he was wearing. He looked exactly like the kind of heartthrob a teenage girl would hang a poster of over her bed and stare longingly at._

_He remembers the fear radiating from both of them as the nude, bleeding carcass lunges at them, unholy groans and gasps emitting from the humanoid creature. Its shaking, dead fingers are cold around his jumping throat._

_He remembers covering the other man in a tarp, hands daring to brush against the bare skin of his tanned arms. The man was shaking, eyes wide and body taut._

_He remembers a girl with blonde hair, glaring at him with her suffocating perfume and piercing brown eyes. He also remembers the jealousy and anger clawing at his chest, as if he had the urge to kill this woman for having her hands all over him._

_He remembers the blood dripping from his shirt, and the horror and fear that plays across the man’s face after learning of Herbert’s deeds- and how unhinged his partner really was._

He woke up in a cold sweat, eyes bulging out of their sockets and fingers shaking on the mahogany of his desk.

His heart was hammering against his ribcage, threatening to jump out of his body as his chest heaved. He was just...so confused.

He was _sure…_

He was sure that he would be skipped, or that they were just a myth; after all, he had never seen any proof of them, any proof that soulmates were an actual _thing_, much less that _he_ would get one…

But it did! He’s tethered to someone, someone he’s never even met!

His hands tugged at his hair, and a deep frown took over his young face.

_Well, this…_soulmate _business won’t get the best of him...Not in this godforsaken lifetime…!_

So Herbert West, aged 14, resolves to never sleep- at least not for long.

He knows in his head that microsleeps are unavoidable, that eventually his body will shut down whether he likes it or not- but that doesn’t mean he can’t delay the inevitable.

He does everything he can to avoid the dreams, to avoid sleeping; He chugs coffee and energy drinks and ingests copious amounts of sugar, he watches _truly disturbing_ movies to keep his mind racing and heart banging (for reasons other than the man lurking in his dreams, ready to take his illogical heart captive when Herbert’s defenses are lowered), _anything_.

His school performance suffers, though his grades never falter, and he becomes moody from very little rest, but it’s a small price he’s willing to pay.

(And in the moments that he does sleep, he doesn’t dream of that man, and he has hope that maybe it was a fluke, that he doesn’t _really_ have a soulmate somewhere out there).

However, there’s a part of him that yearns for the man that he can barely remember, for the glimpses of their future that he managed to catch. They’re fleeting, but oh so strong when they do take hold of him.

_(And maybe a part of him is_ scared, _and that’s why he’s fighting against the notion so hard…_

_Maybe he’s scared of being a bad partner, of hurting this wonderful man with his scientific ventures and squandering his only chance at innate companionship…_

_Maybe he’s scared that they’ll end up like his lonely, bitter, and unhappy parents- wishing that they’d never met, that they’d never been destined for each other.)_

And maybe the yearning is stronger than usual one night, when his father is out for some reason and his mother is in the living room probably crying or drinking herself into a reality where they’re a happy family, because he puts his coffee cup loaded with sugar and creamer (and still full) on his nightstand, puts away the horror show of a book he’d bought for his self-inflicted sleepless nights...and lays down.

_The dreams he has that night are less intense...but maybe that’s because the yearning gave way to excitement rather than dread._

_He dreams of being in a dusty old crypt under their shared house, of his hand on the man’s shoulder as he injects the reagent into their hellish creation. They’re regular Victor Frankensteins, but they’re doing it together, and his soulmate’s shoulder feels firm and comforting under his touch._

_He dreams of being in med school with this man, of sneaking into the room filled with squandered lives and dead children, the man hovering by his side like a comforting blanket as he looks for some unfortunate soul to try the reagent on._

_He dreams of driving a bonesaw through a reanimated man, of blood drenching his pristine work shirt and business black slacks, of the feeling of anger and possession clawing at his chest because how_ dare _this creature lay its filthy, rotting hands on his precious partner?!_

_He dreams of being dragged out of the rubble of their house, of their bride falling apart in a gooey, horrific mess, and their old instructor's severed head disintegrating. The rubble is dusty and the man is bleeding and coughing, but his hands are grounding and heavy and_ Please come back to me! I can’t lose you too! _bounces around in the scientist’s head._

When Herbert wakes up, there’s a heavy weight in his chest as opposed to the suffocating feeling of panic from the first night, but he also feels…

Warm?

He places a shaky hand on his chest right over his racing heart, fingertips cold like death against his barely covered skin, and he sighs. Out of contentment or stress, he can’t quite decipher yet.

All he _does_ know is that he misses the man’s touch, misses the hovering presence of someone taller and protective…

Misses the emotions that made his heart feel like 100 pounds hanging aimlessly in his chest, but made him feel _so alive._.

_(It’s_ care, _his mind whispers. He’d never felt that before...not for anyone, or even_ from _anyone…)_

He lays back down, hand covering his forehead and eyes closing again.

_Is this what it’s supposed to feel like?_ He thinks, but what exactly he means by _it_, he doesn’t know. At least not yet.

Hebert West makes it to age 25, and he goes through partners like God goes through humans.

There’s no meaningful connection to anyone that he invites into his bed; it’s more of just letting things happen, and wanting to fill the void (and fill…_other things_) that seeps into his very bones, and will probably be there until he finally meets the man in his dreams.

He can’t bring himself to feel sorry for the women who cry and the men who get angry, because they should’ve known that there was nothing behind their encounters.

(But he guesses it _is_ a little mean to just...use these vulnerable people who also haven’t found their soulmate, but he can’t find it in himself to stop.

Besides...maybe they need someone to fill the void, too; after all, there’s a _reason_ they seek him of all people out, is there not?)

_And no matter how much he dates around, whoring himself out like a bitch in heat, his heart is always occupied by the man in his dreams._

__He yearns for intimacy, for understanding, for_ care- _for the emotions only that man can bring.__

_ _He yearns for late night movie marathons of innocuous nonsense that his soulmate loved to watch. Herbert knew he would hate every single movie and complain to high heaven, but he felt content in the man’s strong arms anyway._ _

_ _He yearns for the blood and guts, and the excitement, He yearns for the thrill deep in his stomach when an experiment works, when the man’s face lights up like a proverbial Christmas tree and his eyes sparkle like galaxies._ _

__He yearns for those kind and understanding brown eyes, for that strong hand on his own and a deep voice saying_ Herbert, please...you need to go back to bed. _In the dreams, Herbert doesn’t remember ever following the man’s suggestion, but he remembers the warmth in his chest that blooms because_ someone finally cares…_

_But even still, Herbert works. He works and seduces and works again, trying in vain to chase the yearning away as he perfects his reagent._

_After all, Herbert West is a scientist before a man, and his work is leagues more important than his pitiful heart and weak emotions- and a bond to some man he has never and probably will never meet (_but feels like he’s known his whole life…_)._

_It was just how the world worked...and Herbert West was just meant to be alone._

...But then his first day at Miskatonic Medical School began, the young man fresh off a ‘mishap’ at his old medical school in Switzerland that resulted in him being kicked out and transferred to a school in Arkham, Essex County. 

_(He’d had probable deniability after all; it’s not like anyone could really _prove_ that he’d killed Dr. Gruber even if they all ‘knew’ it, but he had a sneaking suspicion that they just wanted him as far away from the school as possible so that he couldn’t cause any more mayhem...and really, he didn’t fault them for that.)_

As soon as he’d gotten into the car that would drive him to the school, he felt his stomach lurch; he tried to chalk it up to nervousness at going to a new school (_even though he hadn’t been nervous about _first days of school_since he was in 7th grade.)_, but the lurching in his stomach felt like it was trying to _tell_ him something, or lead him somewhere. 

He couldn’t stop fiddling with his hands, and he felt a certain trepidation in his chest; he felt like an anxious 13-year-old all over again, with all of the nervous energy coursing through his body. 

He felt like something big was going to happen when he got to the school...something _dangerous_, maybe- something that he had to be ready for. 

He arrived at Miskatonic at 3:30 pm sharp, shortly after the students had finished their shifts for the day. He was greeted by one Dean Halsey, an aging, presumably senile (yet warm enough) old man who shook his hand with all the grace and poise of a drunken elephant- though for once, Herbert was polite enough to wipe the cold sweat from Halsey’s palm onto his dress slacks when the older man wasn’t looking. 

He was lead down the narrow, shadowy hallways of Miskatonic, carved in despair and bathed in fluorescent lights- it looked more like a psyche ward than a school, primitive and wide, with blood on the walls and the screams of patients. 

With every step he took, the anxious feeling from earlier intensified, gnawing at the back of his mind and breathing down his neck like impending death, up until the two men made it to the far end of Miskatonic and ended up in the morgue… 

Where Herbert West came face to face with…_him._

Daniel Cain took up space easily in the dingy morgue, hands in his loose green scrubs and hair matted to his sweaty forehead with an easy grin on his chiseled face...his brown eyes were turned on Halsey for the moment, and Herbert’s heart dropped all the way into his shoes as jealousy reared its ugly head at the thought of this man _ignoring_ hin, and he yearned for the man to just _turn his head_.

Daniel Cain, whose jaw worked in tandem with his biceps in a hypnotic manner, tawny hair smooth and layered in a way that Hebert wanted to run his fingers through, whose silver watch glittered in the blinding overhead lights (Herbert knew it was a gift from _her_, and tried to push the bittersweet feeling of envy that clawed at his chest and stuck to his throat).

_Daniel Cain, a sentimental fool who knows nothing of actual science, whose brilliant mind is wasted on pointless ideas of blasphemy and emotions...who will betray him because of that stupidly kind heart._

_Daniel Cain, an angel who held him after long nights of experimenting in those warm arms and laughed at dumb horror movies, who gave him a chance when no one else would...the man Herbert would rip his own heart right out of his chest for._

Dan finally turns to look at him at Dean Halsey’s prompting, and _good lord_, his eyes were every bit as kind and brown as Herbert dreamed, curtained by cropped eyelashes and just the right size to make Herbert’s heart hammer against his ribcage once more.

There’s something palpable between them, as potent as the smell of a dead body and as noticeable as the billowing smoke from a gun, something that steals Herbert’s breath right out of his lungs.

"What are you studying?" Dan’s words are clear and understandable, but his tone wavers and shakes. He extends a hand for Herbert to shake, pink dusting his flawless cheeks and eyes wide behind the lashes. Herbert longs to take those fingers in his and never let go, to keep him as his own for all eternity.

Instead, he breezes past him, trying to keep his air of indifference intact.

"Death." Dramatic, but not untrue, and it captures Dan’s interest instantly; Herbert can feel the pinpricks of his gaze on his neck, an all too familiar heat burning in the pit of his stomach that stokes the ice in his veins.

_Hell, they were_ soulmates. _This was_ real.

Herbert feels more than hears Dan’s shuffling footsteps as if he makes to follow him, and Herbert lets a small smirk crawl onto his face at the notion.

_Yes, Daniel,_ He thinks. _Come with me...Follow me all the way down._


End file.
